A group of pharmacology researchers in the UK has lost two papers after submitting effectively identical versions to different journals — and getting them accepted, of course — just a day apart.
The first article appeared on the British Journal of Pharmacology‘s website on July 10, 2012. It was titled “Exendin-4 reverts behavioural and neurochemicaldysfunction in a pre-motor rodent model of Parkinson’s disease with noradrenergic deficit.”
Paper 2 appeared in the journal Neuropeptides in October, although it has an online pub date of August 24, and was titled “Exendin-4 reverses biochemical and behavioral deficits in a pre-motor rodent model of Parkinson’s disease with combined noradrenergic and serotonergic lesions.”
According to the retraction notice in the BJP:
The following article from British Journal of Pharmacology, ‘Exendin-4 reverts behavioural and neurochemical dysfunction in a pre-motor rodent model of Parkinson’s disease with noradrenergic deficit’ by N Rampersaud, A Harkavyi, G Giordano, R Lever, J Whitton and PS Whitton, published online on 10 July 2012 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal Editor in Chief, Prof. J.C. McGrath and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The retraction has been agreed due to the article showing apparently considerable overlap with a paper published in 2012 in Neuropeptides, 46(5):183–193 (DOI: 10.1016/j.npep.2012.07.004) entitled ‘Exendin-4 reverses biochemical and behavioral deficits in a pre-motor rodent model of Parkinson’s disease with combined noradrenergic and serotonergic lesions’ by the same authors. The overlapping articles were submitted to each journal one day apart and neither paper cited the other. It was not possible to identify this overlap at the time of article review and acceptance. One of the conditions of submission of a manuscript to British Journal of Pharmacology is that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. As such this instance represents an infringement of the journal policy and the authors have therefore agreed to retract the article. The authors apologise for the unfortunate errors which lead to the submission of both papers at once and, having retracted both papers in recognition of this breach of accepted scholarly publication ethics, intend to prepare a single new paper to present the underlying work, the scientific validity of which has not been questioned.
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. The article is a duplicate of a paper published in 2012 in British Journal of Pharmacology, 167(7): 1467–1479 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-5381.2012.02100.x). The duplicate articles were submitted to each journal one day apart and neither paper cited the other. It was not possible to identify this paper as a duplicate at the time of article review and acceptance.
One of the conditions of submission of a manuscript to Neuropeptides is that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. As such this instance represents an infringement of the journal policy, which can be found via the following link: http://www.elsevier.com/journals/neuropeptides/0143-4179/guide-for-authors
The Neuropeptides paper has been cited once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, while the BJP version has yet to be cited.
The only thing we’ll note about the statements is the bit about the lack of a citation. Given the similarities of the two articles, it’s not clear what use a reference would have been — unless it said: “We’ve already published this work [HERE].”
Actually, we have one other thing to point out: One of the authors, Rebecca Lever, is a member of the editorial board of the BJP.
“The authors apologise for the unfortunate errors which lead to the submission of both papers at once […]” – they have, for sure on unfortunate error, accidentally formatted the same thing for two different article styles. Taken verbatim, they do not apologise for submitting both papers, just for the fact that they submitted them “at once”. 🙂
Not commenting on the “unfortunate errors” might have been the better choice for the authors, that would have left them with some honesty at least, but this is just ridiculous.
I must admit: I too have submitted to two journals before, using two different article styles, with the most important thing being that those were briefly spaced but not “at once”. There was a rejection in between in my case.
Perhaps the authors anticipated a rejection and already assumed they would have to resubmit elsewhere, and for some exotic reason that wasn’t properly synched by accident? Of course, that doesn’t make it right, and it remains unforgiveably uncareful. A weird story, but perhaps it is not altogether “ridiculous”.